May 2nd 2017

KYW Newsradio

Categorized As:

Philly’s tech sector accelerating, but not running on all cylinders

May 2, 2017

Ian Bush, Reporter, KYW Newsradio

Philadelphia’s technology sector boasts higher average salaries than other jobs, thousands of openings, and growth second only to the Bay Area, a region synonymous with tech. While it’s a major driver of our economy, a new study finds several things holding us back.

Chalk up a quarter of all job growth here to Information Technology.

Acting director Josh Sevin of the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia said, “Tech jobs — we’ve added more than 25,000 of them since 2002.”

The Economy League is behind the research, and Sevin notes trouble spots, like diversity.

“You see under representation in our IT workforce among women and people of color,” he said. “If they’re not seeing people who look like them, it can be a little hard for those folks to see themselves in these careers.”

And there are misperceptions of a narrow workforce, of only highly-skilled positions available solely in startups.

“They may just think of coding,” he said. “And the fact is, there’s a much wider variety of IT jobs out there that meet a variety of interests and skill sets.”

Sevin says future success will be driven in part by raising awareness of those opportunities, alongside early tech education, and employer investments in retraining programs.